


This Debt Won't Go Away

by Highsmith (quimtessence)



Series: Whumptober 2019 [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Canon Queer Character, Character Death Fix, Character Study, Coming Out, Developing Relationship, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Emotional Hangover Recovery Fic, First Kiss, Fix-It, Friendship/Love, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity (If You Wanna Be That Way), M/M, Movie: IT Chapter Two (2019), Reddie Whump, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, The Classic What If Where Richie Drags Eddie Out of the Tunnels, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019, Whumptober2k19, r + e
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 08:31:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20850509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/pseuds/Highsmith
Summary: He forgets for a good minute there that it's the middle of summer. Not like any summer he's ever had, not since being a kid in Derry, and that's in more ways than one. The kind of summer where the sun makes everything shine like crystal, where everything's a shade too warm and it hurts your eyes to stare for too long. Richie remembers staring for too goddamn long, always too long. Ironically not enough to have it fucking matter any.They get Eddie out.(Written as part of Whumptober2019 for the Day 1 alternate prompt "Wake up!")





	This Debt Won't Go Away

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Bloody Shirt" by To Kill a King, the most Derry/Losers/Reddie song **EVER**, and totally my jam. (The Bastille remix has my heart, too.)

Richie is kind of a big dude. Or, at least, a tall dude. Not much with the upper body strength, but Eddie's a short dude by a lot of people's standards, objectively compact, small enough that Richie can easily use the adrenaline running through his entire body to lift him up, carry him out, despite all of the other Losers yelling at him that Eddie's—_gone_. Gone gone _gone_, and never coming back.

Yelling things at him right now is pretty much pointless, because Richie's choosing not to think about any of that at all while dragging Eddie along out of the tunnels and up into the sunshine. He's had the weirdest case of amnesia for the last two decades; he can choose to ignore what's probably staring him right in the face for a little while longer.

*

He forgets for a good minute there that it's the middle of summer. Not like any summer he's ever had, not since being a kid in Derry, and that's in more ways than one. The kind of summer where the sun makes everything shine like crystal, where everything's a shade too warm and it hurts your eyes to stare for too long. Richie remembers staring for too goddamn long, always too long. Ironically not enough to have it fucking matter any.

Once they're all outside and the house collapses into a shower of dust and dirt and horrorshow bullshit, Richie has Eddie lying on his back near the street and him crouching by his side. His jaw twitches as if there's words he wants to get out but his head is too empty to properly verbalise, so his bones don't yet know how to move. His teeth ache in his mouth.

Daylight is too fucking bright for this shit. Ridiculously enough, he misses the sewers for about the blink of an eye. Then he's back in the shittiness of the moment, where things are fucked up and there's very little he wants to think about less than sewers.

He doesn't yell out "Wake up!" or "Don't be gone!" or anything pathetic like that. His throat hurts too much from screaming before, from all the crying, from carrying Eddie up to the surface. He's not a dumbass, although that might be debatable where Eddie Kaspbrak is concerned. Idly he wonders how long he can swim around in denial before it breaks him.

It's Beverly who comes to his side first. Doesn't touch him. Either of them. It's for the best. Richie might explode out of his skin if she did, if anyone did right now. Eddie, he doesn't quite know, doesn't know what the protocol is with people who are, you know, not there anymore.

The rest follow, and suddenly they're all there in his space, hugging him, touching him, and all he wants is to yell at Eddie to wake the fuck up. Pathetically. He's so pathetic. But, seriously, what the fuck, this can't be how this ends. This can't be fucking it.

And maybe Eddie hears him through the magical powers of telepathically-endowed dead people. Or Richie was saying it out loud all along. Regardless, it can't be his mind finally breaking because Beverly gasps next to him, and Ben swears, and Mike starts laughing in a hysterical way which would be funny if Richie had any humour left in him, but it means they see it, too, it's not just him.

It's not just him.

Eddie blinks his eyes open, slowly, as if the sun is hurting him personally. Then he says in a voice so broken it has trouble staying within the same couple of octaves, "What the fuck." It's not a question.

And Richie, well. He's not proud of what he finds himself doing. But it's suddenly way too easy to breach the distance between them just as Eddie's lifting himself onto his elbows with more strength than he should be able to muster after being impaled by a fucking sewer clown.

Truthfully, he doesn't mean to crawl over until he finds himself hovering over Eddie's body, crowding him when he's barely been breathing for half a second, a little too much like the reverse of how they were _down there_, but once his knees are touching the ground between Eddie's legs it's a little late to take it back.

None of the Losers are saying anything. That should mean something. Richie's brain isn't processing at full speed just yet.

"Welcome back, Spaghetti Man," he croaks out. Swallows against nothing when he feels his own breathing picking up. He should be crashing on an adrenaline drop; instead, his heart is beating in overdrive.

Unnervingly enough, Eddie blinks at him, only that for the longest time. His clothes and his everything are filthy. All of them are. Richie should know this; should also know it's probably a _bad fucking idea_ to lean in. He's leaning in, fuck. He's not proud of the way he's being obvious. His dirty little secret. Fuck. He can't explain it to himself, why he's moved at all only to inevitably get the shit beaten out of him for his trouble. He's going to get slapped for sure. Or punched. This is fucked-up.

He's an inch away, stalling now. His arms are clenching and unclenching at his sides. He's balanced precariously on his knees, but they're not yet touching. Richie doesn't know what will happen if they touch. If Richie gets to touch first, without Eddie having any input, that would be shitty in and of itself.

So of course Eddie speaks first, before Richie can hyperventilate. It takes eons for him to find his voice, and then finally to say, "I think. I think I'm. You know I." Stops, mouth still open a little without any words coming out. His lips are still a little too pink underneath the grime.

Richie's entranced. Oddly so. He can't stop staring from Eddie's mouth to his lashes and back. "Eddie?" he asks, although he doesn't know at all what he's asking. They're still in the same conversation they were having—_before_. Richie's head is swimming.

Eddie blinks. "I think I'm gay. I think. Yeah. I think I maybe forgot I said it to myself back then." Then shuts his mouth so harshly his teeth sort of clack against each other inside his mouth.

Eddie Kaspbrak might be the bravest man Richie's ever met.

It's all very anticlimactic after that. Which might be why Richie's heart is still beating way too quickly, as if to say _do it, coward_, as if this is the moment he has to fill, even though he shouldn't. Eddie's eyes are bright like crystal, hypnotising, waiting for Richie to... something.

"Eddie," he says evenly.

It's sort of funny that Richie doesn't get to lean in all the way first. Eddie beats him to it. Fucking braver than anyone should ever be, this kid. Not a kid. They're grown men. And they're kissing. Eddie is kissing him.

Richie kisses him back. He's not an idiot.

**Author's Note:**

> So it's fair to say Reddie is kind of taking over my life. For context, this is the sixth Reddie story I've started in the last two and a half weeks. Sixth! Asdsgfshkljg
> 
> Like with any new OTP-ish thing for me, I'm working through my characterisation choices and trying my best not to post All the Smut with zero plot straight away, but, like, that's an issue for me. Also, first completed story for this pairing; whoot-whoot for me, I guess.
> 
> IDK, man. I'm kind of hooked. I'm gonna try my best to do Whumptober fully, though I have been travelling for the past week and won't get back home until Sunday; we'll see how that goes for me. The alternate prompts are kind of my jam, so expect some more of that regardless.
> 
> Oh, and I have [tumblr](https://rhubarbdreams.tumblr.com/), but the content is not exclusively Reddie, but, like, there is a whole lot of that lately, so yeah. Hit me up!


End file.
